Four short links: 24 September 2009

Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography — This resource provides a comprehensive view of the history of cartography, with examples of maps created throughout the ages and background information about the contexts within which those maps, visualizations and map making technologies were created. Explore each time period, click on the images and stories found throughout each time line, and read more about the history of creating thematic maps as a means of visualizing data. (via Titine on Delicious)

GDB and Reverse Debugging — GDB version 7.0 (due September 2009) will be the first public release of gdb to support reverse debugging (the ability to make the program being debugged step and continue in reverse). (via Hacker News)

A New Self-Definition for FOSS — There was this clamour in the past to get companies to open source their products. This has stopped, because all the software that got open source sucked. It’s just not very interesting to have a closed source program get open sourced. It doesn’t help anyone, because the way closed source software is created in a very different way than open source software. The result is a software base that just does not engage people in a way to make it a valid piece of software for further development. I don’t agree entirely with this quoted piece, but there’s a lot to what he says. Open source is not a silver bullet–hell, most people don’t even know what the werewolf is. Open sourcing doesn’t magically make developers appear, open sourcing doesn’t magically make a market appear. Your closed source problems still exist after you open source because it’s. not. about. you. It’s about the users and their comfort, abilities, and freedoms. (via Simon Willison)

About GDB and Reverse Debugging…With the release of gdb version 7.0, the debugger gained support for python scripts. This means that we can extend gdb with out own commands or create functions to operate with data structures. It works for me :) If you want you can see the source code on my site Sport news

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